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Gazing down on Earth again: A real hero

By TIM WOOD

A generation has lost a real hero.

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, has died.

The generation X and Y’ers may not think much of this news event. Some of them don’t even believe that men walked on the moon. If you weren’t alive in the ’60s, you might not remember the magnitude of the moon landing effort and the drama that came with it.

I was alive during the ’60s, although I was but a child. For those of you younger folks or those who haven’t read up on this bit of history, here’s a brief recap: The U.S. and the Soviet Union were involved in a “space race.” The Soviets had shocked the world first with launching Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite in 1957; then followed up by beating the U.S. again by sending Yuri Gagarin into orbit. He was the first man in space. A series of other Soviet “firsts” followed, including the first woman in space and the first space walk.

These accomplishments threatened American pride, not to mention national security. It was clear that the Soviets had bigger rocket boosters than the U.S., and bigger boosters meant bigger nuclear warheads in case someone pushed the “button.”

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, President John F. Kennedy challenged the American people to put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the 1960s.

It was a preposterous goal. At the time, the best the U.S. had done was send Alan Shepard on a suborbital space flight. We were well behind the Russians. It was a bold challenge.

Neil Armstrong was one of the men who rose to that challenge.

As a child, I was fascinated with the space program. I watched as many launches as I could. I read voraciously about it. To this day, I still can describe the various Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions, who flew on them and what was accomplished.

I can tell you that Neil Armstrong may have single-handedly saved the space program when, on a two-man Gemini mission, he was confronted with what could have been a fatal situation. A thruster on the spacecraft became stuck open, sending the tiny capsule into a dangerous rotation. Armstrong and crewmate Dave Scott figured out the problem, and Armstrong used the re-entry control system to perform an emergency landing. Had Armstrong and Scott not survived that emergency, the tragedy could have shut down the space program — or at least delayed the moon landing significantly.

Another astronaut, Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, seemingly was destined to be the first moon-walker. He had flown a one-man Mercury mission and a two-man Gemini mission. He was a leader in the Apollo program, the final step in the moon landing sequence.

But he and fellow crewmen Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in a launch pad fire during a practice run for the first Apollo test mission. It had to be a chilling warning for other astronauts, such as Armstrong.

But, remember, these are heroes we are talking about.

Today’s heroes appear to be professional athletes and entertainers. Volumes of newsprint and hours of television are not given over to men and women who risk their lives for their country.

The astronauts were my heroes in the 1960s. Writer Tom Wolfe called them “single-combat warriors.” It was as if the space race was taking the place of an all-out war between the nations, a war that would have devastated the world.

The astronauts were working to restore American pride and win this race.

Until the moon landing, Armstrong was not the most visible of the astronauts. That title would have gone to John Glenn, the grinning Marine who was the first American to orbit the Earth and who also survived a harrowing re-entry emergency. But Glenn never flew in the moon program after that Mercury mission. Some speculate that President Kennedy grounded him so that America would not risk losing this national hero. Later, of course, he would make history again by flying on a space shuttle mission.

Armstrong did not have the charisma of a John Glenn. He was a self-professed “pocket-protector carrying nerd engineer.”

Strangely, though, I never knew any nerd engineers who flew primitive jet fighters off of tiny aircraft carriers to do battle in the Korean conflict. Nerd engineers usually don’t strap themselves into rocket planes like the X-15 and push the envelope of winged aircraft performance.

Interestingly, Armstrong never tried to capitalize on his fame in a big way. He did some speaking engagements over the years and did an endorsement for a brand of automobiles, but he never made a major effort to profit off of his fame.

Fame had its price, though. He had to hire a secretary to handle the flood of mail he received, the flood that kept coming years after the first lunar landing. His signature went on thousands of Eagle Scout certificates until he stopped the practice. He constantly dealt with an unending flow of interview requests.

In contrast, Buzz Aldrin, who was the other astronaut who landed on the moon with Armstrong, has been much more visible and more outspoken about the space program. Sadly though, Aldrin also has lived a soap opera life since the landing.

Fortuitously, Armstrong consented to having a biography, “First Man,” written a few years ago. It’s an invaluable resource about the space program and about the first man to walk on the moon. He spoke out recently about the Obama administration’s plan to turn over much of the space program to private industry. He opposed it, saying that the government should stay in the manned space flight business.

Armstrong received a lot of kidding about his aversion to exercise. He was reported to have said that he had a limited number of heartbeats in this life and he was not about to waste any of them.

The heartbeats finally ran out for this American hero. He was the right man for the right time and raised the spirits of the world with his accomplishment.

It’s still awe-inspiring to look at the moon and realize that 12 men walked on it. Armstrong was the first, and arguably, the best.

May God rest this incredible American icon.

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Tim Wood is a teacher at Central High School and former editor of the Daily Herald.